


advanced romanticism

by Lirazel



Series: the toaster 'verse [3]
Category: 9Muses, Apink, Infinite (Band), K-pop, Nine Muses
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-08
Updated: 2014-05-12
Packaged: 2018-01-24 00:56:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1585757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lirazel/pseuds/Lirazel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"This is what comes of being the only straight guys in our group of friends.  We have no one to talk to to get some perspective when we’re both having girl problems.”</i>
</p><p> </p><p>Hoya and Sungjong are having a little trouble with romance.  But they both manage to figure it out.  Eventually.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

Sungjong is probably Hoya’s (second) favorite person in the world, and they’ve been best friends since Hoya found him in the practice room in the middle of the night doing girl group dances, but Hoya’s pretty sure he’ll never really understand his best friend. Not just his love of bloody horror movies—the more graphic the better, as far as Sungjong is concerned—or how he doesn’t take any shit from people but will melt over any animal he sees or the Bible that sits on his bedside table that he actually _reads_ —every morning!—or the dresses that hang in his closet (carefully ironed and encased in plastic protection, right next to his striped shirts and his knee-length shorts, not even hidden at all, because Sungjong isn’t ashamed of anything), but also his emotional reactions to things. Or lack thereof, in this case.

“So,” Hoya says, gearing up to go through it again, just to make sure he’s really got it this time. “You and Bora broke up.”

“Yes, hyung.”

“Thirty minutes ago.”

“Yes, hyung.”

“And you’re…totally fine.”

“Yes, hyung.”

Sungjong has been totally calm since he walked through the door to their apartment and made his announcement, but now irritation is flickering in his eyes. Sungjong almost never gets mad at Hoya, but he does get very annoyed whenever anyone treats him like a child, which Hoya almost never does. And that isn’t what Hoya’s trying to do at the moment, either: he just honestly _doesn’t understand_. Sungjong has been broken up with his girlfriend for less than an hour—shouldn’t he be at least a _little_ upset?

But Sungjong is just flipping through magazines ripping out pictures for some collage thing he’s working on, and the ripping isn’t even particularly violent—he’s been way, way scarier with it after Sunggyu has bossed him around or Woohyun’s played a dumb trick on him. Sungjong’s legs are crossed, his movements are crisp, his face is calm, and every few minutes he flicks his hair out of his eyes. Basically: he looks exactly like he always does. 

Which is…weird. It’s not that Hoya thinks Sungjong should be crying his eyes out or anything—Sungjong isn’t a crier, and he and Bora have only been dating for like three months. It’s just that Hoya’s other best friend is Dongwoo, who cries whenever he thinks he’s hurt Woohyun or Sunggyu’s feelings (which he’s never done in the entire time he’s known them, but you can’t tell him that), and Myungsoo has ended up sobbing all over Hoya’s favorite purple hoodie more than once when Sungyeol has gone through one of his drama queen moments and ‘dumped’ him (of course they’re back together the next day, sucking face and being gross, but no matter how often Hoya reminds Myungsoo that Sungyeol always takes him back within _hours_ , it doesn’t stop Myungsoo from crying like the world is about to end). And when Hoya broke up with his high school girlfriend back in Busan a week before he left for university because they both knew the long-distance thing probably wouldn’t work, he’d teared up a little when she hugged him (and, okay, again when he got back to his bedroom and again several times over the next few days) and felt like shit for at least a couple of weeks (months) afterwards. 

People get _upset_ over breakups. Either they’re angry or they’re depressed or at the very least wistful, but they have some sort of emotional reaction. They don’t calmly do their mixed media assignments like it’s any other day.

Maybe it just hasn’t sunk in yet. Maybe later it’ll hit him and he’ll at least get a little misty-eyed or something. Sungjong has more control over his emotions than most people Hoya knows (especially considering that almost all of his friends are drama queens in one way or another), and Hoya isn’t really surprised that he’s subdued, but he figures at least _some_ emotional reaction will pop up sooner or later. And of course Hoya will be there for him when it does.

“Okay, Sungjongie, well, if you need to talk later, I’m here.” Hoya pats Sungjong on the shoulder and turns to head to his room—he’s got an international relations paper due in a few days.

But Sungjong must be able to read minds or something, because he stops him. “Hyung,” he says with a sigh.

“Hm?” Hoya turns to face him and sees Sungjong lay down his magazine and give him an impatient look.

“Look. It’s nice that you’re wanting to be supportive and everything, but you really don’t need to waste time and energy worrying about me. I’m fine.”

“Okay, Jjongie,” Hoya agrees readily.

“Hyung—”

“I believe you, Sungjong.” Sungjong really is perfectly fine right now. It’s later that he’ll need Hoya.

“No, hyung, you don’t understand.” Sungjong sighs again and gestures to the couch beside him, clearly ready to have an actual conversation. Just what Hoya had been waiting for. He plops down on the couch immediately.

“I’m really not upset at all—no, don’t start saying you know, I hate it when you patronize me, hyung—and I’m not _going_ to be upset, either. Our decision was completely mutual and totally amicable. We really enjoyed the time we were together and I still like Bora-noona very much, but we both agreed that our time together was over. There is _nothing_ for me to be upset about. Do you understand?”

Sungjong sweeps his side-swept bangs out of his eyes so he can focus on Hoya, and he does look absolutely serious. Still, Hoya doesn’t really get it. It’s not like he and Bora just slept together a couple of times and hung out some—Hoya’s done that with a few girls and doesn’t feel the slightest twinge of regret when they decide to call things off. But this wasn’t just fooling around, this was actual dating, and dating’s supposed to involve _feelings_ , right? He knows how much Sungjong liked Bora, knows how much she liked him back, how much fun they had together, laughing and talking and everything. There had to have been feelings, too, right?

But apparently not. He can’t exactly disbelieve Sungjong, not when Sungjong is so incredibly mature and self-aware. So he just shrugs. “Whatever you say, Sungjongie.”

Sungjong can apparently tell that Hoya still doesn’t really get it because he shakes his head and pats Hoya’s hand. “Just don’t worry about me, hyung. Don’t think about it anymore.” A grin splits his face, a little devious. “Just focus on your own love life. Have you asked Eunji out yet?”

Hoya moans and rolls his eyes at Sungjong’s devilish grin because Sungjong is _always_ pressing him about this: _Just ask her out already, hyung!_ Like it’s that easy. Apparently all stages of relationships are just that easy for Lee Sungjong. But there’s only one Lee Sungjong in the world, and unfortunately Hoya isn’t him. “I’m going to study,” he says, pushing off the couch. “Let me know if you get tired of all the papercuts and want to go grab some food or something.”

As he closes the door to his room, he hears Sungjong’s soft voice again: “I really am fine, hyung.”

Hoya grunts to himself and tries not to worry.

 

 

  


But the thing is, he kind of can’t help worrying about Sungjong. Not because Sungjong’s not more than capable of taking care of himself—honestly, of all of Hoya’s friends, Sungjong is probably the only one who can function as a responsible adult; even Sunggyu turns into a baby at the most inopportune times—but because Hoya just adores him so much. He’s never known anyone even remotely like Sungjong, and he’d known how special Sungjong was from that first night when he walked into the practice room and found the freshman dancing to Orange Caramel’s “Bangkok City” in the dim light. His moves weren’t the kind Hoya does, far more fluid and loose-limbed than what Hoya had favored up to that point, but they were mesmerizing and defiant and it hadn’t been hard at all to step fully into the room and ask Sungjong to show him how he did that chest-popping thing. 

Hoya had expected him to be embarrassed or at least sheepish at being caught—a freshman caught by an upperclassman doing girl group dances and doing them just as well as the girl group themselves—but Sungjong had merely smiled and invited him in and they’d spent the next several hours talking dance and getting to know each other. By the time they parted ways—it was dawn and Hoya skipped his comparative politics course to go back to his dorm room and sleep—Hoya was sure that Sungjong was just about the most amazing person on the planet. (Or at least he’d thought so until he laid eyes on the girl who works the concessions stand at the soccer games, but that’s another story.)

It hadn’t taken long for them to become best friends, and since then Hoya’s always been concerned about Sungjong’s happiness. He _wants_ to believe that this breakup won’t have any affect on his friend at all, but it’s just really hard to convince himself of that, and he’ll never forgive himself if Sungjong is hurting and he can’t be there for him.

Which explains why he tracks down Bora the next day. It’s not hard—she’s in his lit gen ed and they usually wave at each other across the room at the beginning of class. He likes Bora a lot, and she always treated Sungjong well, but they’re not close or anything. So today is the first day Hoya actually hurries to catch her after class.

“Hey, you got just a second?”

She smiles at him, waves for Hyojung to go on without her, and swings her backpack on. “If this is about me and Sungjong breaking up, you really don’t need to worry.”

Hoya blinks, because, okay, that was easier than he’d thought it was going to be. “I—okay—“

“It really was mutual,” Bora interrupts, still smiling. “We were never in love in the first place, and it was great being together. But we both agreed that it really wasn’t headed anywhere and it was best to end it before we started to resent each other.”

“Well, that’s really…mature of you.”

Bora laughs, ponytail bobbing with the motion. “Believe it or not, some people are capable of having mature relationships, Hoya.”

Hoya’s smile is a bit wry. “Usually not in university, though.”

Another laugh. “Usually not. But then, there’s nothing usual about Sungjong.”

Well, that Hoya can certainly agree with. “He’s pretty special.”

Bora sobers a bit and leans closer. “Well, that’s the thing actually.”

Hoya tries to tamp down on the alarm rising inside of him. He _knew_ there was something else going on in all of this. Did she find out about the dresses in his closet and get freaked out? Was she threatened by the fact that he’s prettier than her? Hoya hadn’t thought she’d be that way, but if she is, he’ll take back every single good thought he ever had about her. 

But even though her eyes are serious and her tone confidential, she doesn’t seem judgmental or disgusted. “Sungjong is a fantastic boyfriend,” she says. “The best boyfriend I ever had, in fact. I mean, at first, I thought it was kind of funny when he asked me out and I really only said yes because I thought he was so gorgeous. He’s younger and everything, so I didn’t think he’d really be all that good at dating. But he’s _incredibly_ good at it, and that’s one of the reasons I thought we should break up.”

Hoya stares at her. That makes…no sense whatsoever. “What.”

She laughs again, quieter this time. “I know it sounds crazy, breaking up with a guy because he’s too good at being a boyfriend. But I wasn’t in love with him, and I knew he wasn’t in love with me, and, okay, it’s great to just be with such a good person in a casual way, but I really felt like he was _wasted_ on our casual thing. A guy like that should be with someone who’s absolutely crazy about him. He needs to find someone to fall in love with, and he wasn’t going to be able to do that while we were together. So it’s better this way. You know?”

Hoya isn’t sure if that’s one of the most reasonable or one of the most ridiculous things he’s ever heard in his life, but either way, he feels the anxiety seep out of him. Bora isn’t a judgmental jerk, Sungjong really isn’t heartbroken, and Hoya doesn’t need to worry about this anymore. Awesome.

“But it’s really sweet that you were worried about him,” Bora says, patting him on the arm. “You’re a great friend, Hoya-yah.”

Hoya smiles, baring his canines. “Thanks, Bora-sunbae.”

“Sure. I’m sure we’ll see each other around some—I’m not going to completely stop hanging out with Sungjong just because we broke up. Have a great day!”

And then she’s gone with a swish of her ponytail, and Hoya relaxes for the first time since Sungjong informed him of the breakup. As he heads off to his dance class, he thinks this probably _will_ be a great day. 

 

 

 

As it turns out, he arrived at that conclusion _much_ too soon. He’s eating lunch with Woohyun and Sungyeol on the patio at the back of the cafeteria and laughing as Sungyeol threatens to kill Woohyun if Woohyun says one more thing about how sexy Sunggyu is when he sings when a furious girl in a baseball cap suddenly appears at the end of the table. Hoya’s laughter dies away as he looks at her—she’s really hot, but that’s not what catches his attention. It’s the absolute _fury_ in her eyes that strangles his mirth.

“Uh,” Woohyun says, arching a brow at her. “Can we help you?” Usually he’s overly greasy with girls, but right now even he sounds a little tentative. That’s how tangible this girl’s anger is.

“Which one of you is Lee Howon?” she asks as she sweeps her burning eyes over the three of them. Her voice is tight and low and totally at odds with the binder she’s clutching to her chest—the one covered in pictures of cats wearing silly hats and kittens sitting in teacups and hearts with the word “catlady” scrawled on them. The incongruity of an adorable cat collage and her snapping eyes makes Hoya’s head spin a little.

Woohyun and Sungyeol point in unison to Hoya and Hoya cringes as the force of the girl’s fury focuses on him. It’s so intense that he can’t even wrack his brain to come up with a reason that someone he’s never talked to before—though her face looks vaguely familiar—would be this angry at him.

“Do you want me to _castrate_ you, you disgusting pervert?”

Okay, _what_? Hoya’s hand flies to cover his delicate bits—and when he glances desperately across the table at his friends, he sees that both of their hands are covering their crotches as well—and his head spins faster than a whirligig. What the fuck did he do to deserve a threat like that? He’s your average college guy, and yeah, he watches some porn and likes to check out girls’ asses as they pass, but he also was raised to respect women and he never has a one night stand with a girl unless he’s positive that’s all she wants too and he can’t think of a single thing he’s done in his whole college career that would prompt a reaction like _this_.

“Uh. What?” he croaks, because her anger is so intense his own can’t even flare up.

“Don’t play innocent with me, I’m not the kind of girl who finds that cute.” She tosses her feline-adorned binder down on the table with a slap that makes all three of its occupants jump, swings her backpack off her shoulder, reaches inside, and pulls out a huge bunch of crumpled up paper which she hurls at Hoya’s head. It’s just paper, so it doesn’t hurt, but it’s shocking to say the least and Sungyeol makes a half-laugh, half-whimpering sound as it bounces off of Hoya’s head and falls onto the table. “Keep your foul propositions to yourself, do you hear me?”

Hoya can’t think of what to say to that, so he fumbles for a moment with the paper until he smoothes it out enough to see that it’s a banner about the length of his arm with big red letters that say _LEE HOWON WANTS TO SEE YOU NAKED!_ in hangul. Accompanied by an extremely unflattering picture of him leering at the camera while holding a bottle of beer; Woohyun must have taken it with Myungsoo’s camera on one of their party nights. 

Woohyun. 

Sungyeol.

Hoya’s head slowly pivots to face his friends and he finds that Woohyun is smirking at him and Sungyeol is doing that thing where he’s trying so hard to keep his laughter in that his face screws up and makes him look like a pug puppy. 

Hoya is going to _kill_ them.

“Hey!” The girl’s shout makes all of them jump and immediately plaster their attention back on her. “Pay attention to me when I’m talking to you, you asshole!”

Hoya knows exactly what’s going on now and _he is going to kill Woohyun and Sungyeol_. But first he has to clear this up with this furious woman. “Look, I think there’s been some kind of misunderstanding. My friends—“ His mouth twists around the word because how the fuck did he end up calling such total bastards _friends_? “—really enjoy playing profoundly stupid practical jokes and—”

“ _JOKES_?” Hoya wouldn’t have thought that a woman, even a tall one like this, would be able to roar that way, but she somehow manages it. “You call sexually harassing my girlfriend by sending her emails with disgusting come-ons and videos of you doing stupid hiphop dancing and being all gross and sweaty is some kind of _joke_? And who practices topless anyway—put on a goddamn shirt, you narcissistic asshole!”

Okay, that is crossing the line, even for Sungyeol and Woohyun. And why on earth were they sending them to some girl he doesn’t even know, that doesn’t make any—

Wait. Girlfriend?

“Girlfriend?” Woohyun and Sungyeol chorus together, and now they sound absolutely _gleeful_ , and Woohyun is silent-laughing as hard as Sungyeol is and Hoya has never been so pissed at them before, not even that time when they almost made Sungjong cry.

“Yes,” the girl snaps. “My girlfriend Eunji, who never did _anything_ to you and never asked to be sexually harassed and on whose behalf I am going to _castrate_ you.” She points defiantly over her shoulder in the direction of a table full of girls.

Wait.

Eunji?

“You’re crushing on a _lesbian_?” Woohyun hasn’t sounded this happy since the day after he and Dongwoo finally talked Sunggyu into bed for the first time, and Sungyeol is actually sliding off of his chair and down onto the floor, he’s laughing so hard, and _Hoya is going to kill them_.

But then Hoya actually looks at the table full of girls and sees the one the angry girl is pointing to, the one who’s watching them with a big grin on her face as the other girls at the table whisper furiously. She’s pretty, with a short, choppy haircut and big eyes and the deepest dimples Hoya has ever seen—

And she’s definitely not the girl from the concession stand that Hoya’s been crushing on for weeks now.

Hoya takes a deep breath and reaches out to crumple the banner up again. Then he stands, and the angry girl is still taller than him, but he feels a little less intimidated now. 

“I’m really, really sorry about this. My friends have a sick sense of humor. But I promise you that it will never, _ever_ happen again.”

The angry girl purses her lips. “You think that’s good enough?”

“No, I don’t. I’ll apologize to her personally and—pay for you two to go to dinner sometime.” He can hear Sungyeol practically gurgling with laughter at the thought of Hoya paying for lesbians to go on a date, but he keeps his gaze focused on the woman he’s talking to. He’ll see how Sungyeol’s laughing when he finds out that Hoya’s going to make him and Woohyun pay for said dinner and he’s going to make reservations at the most expensive restaurant in town. “And if she hears anything that’s allegedly from me again, I’ll help you report both of them to the dean’s office for sexual harassment.”

Sungyeol’s gurgling turns into a choking noise and Woohyun makes some sort of protesting noise, but the angry girl relaxes some. Her eyes are still fiery, but she tilts her head in a nod of concession. “Make the apology a letter. Handwritten. And I’ll contact you later when we pick a date.”

And then she spins on her heel and is striding on really fantastic legs back through the open double doors to the table where her friends are sitting, and Howon turns very slowly to glower down at the bastards formerly known as his friends.

“What. The. _Fuck_?”

Sungyeol is still tittering, but Woohyun looks a little subdued at the turn the conversation had taken, even if he’s trying to keep a careless smirk on his face. “Just a little bit of harmless fun, Howon, no need to get so worked up,” Woohyun says, holding up his hands as if to prove his innocence.

Harmless _fun_? “Fuck you, Nam, just because you tried all that shit on Sunggyu and got away with it doesn’t mean you can do it to other people. You’re lucky she didn’t report my ass to the dean! You could have gotten me kicked out of school!”

Both Woohyun and Sungyeol look profoundly stupid when they have sheepish expressions on their faces. “I don’t think she’s going to report you,” Sungyeol offers, and then Woohyun chimes in, “And if she does, I know a couple of really excellent lawyers who do pro bono work and—” Hoya’s eyes must flash because Woohyun backtracks quickly. “We’ll write the letter!”

“Damn right you will,” Hoya growls. “ _And_ pay for their dinner. Including appetizers and dessert. At Romero’s.”

Both of their eyes go wide and it’s amazing how much they look alike when they look nothing alike. “But that’ll wipe me out of pocket money for a semester!” Sungyeol protests, voice annoyingly whiny. 

“Well, you two should have thought of that before you decided to play one of your ‘pranks’.” He picks up the banner off the table—it’s easy to recognize Woohyun’s handwriting now—and bunches it up again, hurling it at Sungyeol’s face. “You two idiots didn’t even get the right girl!”

Sungyeol doesn’t even block the paper cannonball, letting it smack into his face and then fall onto his tray and into his slop. The partners in crime stare up at him with equally blank expressions.

“That’s the wrong Eunji, you fuckers!”

Two annoying mouths drop open in unison, and Hoya’s probably going to have to listen to some half-assed protest of ignorance, but then Dongwoo appears at his elbow, tray in hand and a confused smile on his face.

“Was that one of the goddesses from the swim team yelling at you, Hoya? What did you do to piss her off?”

So that’s why she looked familiar. Of course. He’s managed to make an enemy of one of the most popular girls in the whole school. A girl who runs with a crew of eight _other_ girls who are so untouchable that the rest of the campus refers to them as “the goddesses.” Fantastic.

This day is turning out to be anything but great.

 

 

 

Sungjong is, he decides as he heads to the art building to work on his mixed media project before his 8:00 textiles class, determined to come up with a suitable punishment for the idiot prankster hyungs, a punishment so great it makes them regret the day they even considered torturing Hoya by torturing his crush. Sungjong’s quite sure his punishment will be more fearsome than anything Hoya can come up with, because although Hoya might be smart, he’s nowhere near as smart as Sungjong. Hoya always thinks he needs to look out for his younger friend, but more often than not Sungjong ends up being the one who looks out for Hoya. He’s disappointed in himself for not realizing that the Wooyeol idiots were up to something; they’ve been snickering behind their hands for days now and since he hasn’t heard Sunggyu complaining about their antics, he should have figured out that their target was outside their immediate circle of friends. But he’d been knee-deep in chicken wire and bubble wrap (the latter of which Dongwoo-hyung keeps stealing and squirreling away in his closet to “pop later”) for an assignment and then he and Bora broke up, and so he’d been glad to ignore the most annoying of his hyungs.

The breakup hadn’t been distracting in the emotional upheaval sense, but it has left him quite thoughtful. Sungjong had agreed that it was time for him and Bora to go their separate ways, but he rejected her premise that he needed to be free to find someone to fall in love with. Falling in love is all well and good, and of course he wants that some day, but he doesn’t feel the need for it at the moment, not when there are his studies and his friends and his plans for the future to focus on. He’s well aware that a visual arts degree doesn’t always guarantee a job post-graduation, and he had assured his parents since high school that he would do all he can to make the odds of finding gainful employment swing in his favor. He plans to get an internship every semester from now until graduation, and that doesn’t leave a lot of time for relationships. That was what he’d liked so much about Bora: they enjoyed spending time together, they got sex and affection and someone to text when they were awake at 3 in the morning finishing up a paper, but if one of them needed to go a week or two without contact because they were too busy, the other was just fine with that. Sungjong really doesn’t think it would be the same with a serious in-love kind of relationship.

Well, he can be single for a while; he’s fine with that, too. Or maybe he’ll end up finding some other girl who’s interested in something casual. Either way, he’s glad that he and Bora are on the same page. He just wishes Hoya could get his head out of his ass and ask his crush out before Woohyun and Sungyeol find the right girl and torture _her_ to the point where she wants nothing to do with him.

Or maybe Sungjong can put the fear of God into them so that they’ll never try anything like that again and Hoya can take all the time he needs to work up his courage to ask Eunji out. 

Sungjong is using his teeth to pull the tab seal off of his milk—usually something like that would be below his dignity, but it’s just after 6 AM, and every person he passes looks more like a zombie than a college student—and is crossing the quad when he sees Sungyeol’s friend Niel tugging persistently on the (slender, elegant) hand of a (slender, elegant) girl.

“Noona, come on.” Sungjong hears Niel’s voice easily in the clear morning air. Campus is never this quiet, and Sungjong’s always liked the stillness he never gets to experience at any other time. “You _have_ to eat something. You know you won’t swim as well if you don’t have some fuel in you.”

The girl tosses her hair—Sungjong is looking at her back, so that’s all he can really see of her: long, wavy hair (and her slender, elegant figure)—and he can hear the fond amusement in her voice as she answers, “I don’t have _time_ this morning, Daniel. I’m already late as it is—Hyemi fell asleep in the shower so I had to wait to brush my teeth.”

Niel gives her a mournful look, big lips pouting. “Noona, what if you pass out?”

“I’m not going to pass out from missing one meal, Niel-ah. I’ll make sure to start keeping some fruit in our room so I’ll have something to grab if this happens again, okay?”

“But noona—”

Niel’s protests halt abruptly when he notices Sungjong’s hand holding out a muffin. His eyes light up when he follows the line of his arm up and sees Sungjong’s face. “Sungjong-sunbae!”

Sungjong smiles at him and turns his attention to the girl. “You can have this. I’ve got time to grab something else later.”

She turns to face him, and—she’s really beautiful. Really beautiful. Sungjong is used to being the most beautiful person in any room he’s in—not vanity, just facts (okay, maybe a little bit of vanity, but it’s better than having low self-esteem like Sungyeol or being totally oblivious like Myungsoo). But he thinks this girl, with her pale features and dark eyes could almost outshine him. Almost.

She looks at the muffin for a moment, then takes it, eyes moving up to his face and lips quirking in a tiny smile. “Thank you.”

“You can have this, too; I haven’t drunk from it yet.”

She takes the milk too and says again, “Thank you…?” trailing off in invitation for him to offer his name.

“Lee Sungjong,” he says. 

“Park Minha,” she returns. He recognizes the name. He’s been to the swim meets—everyone goes to the swim meets; their women’s swim team has been national champion three years running, and none of the school’s other (pretty pathetic) sports teams come close to their level of popularity for just that reason—and he’s seen her from afar, long body encased in a blue suit, hair tucked under a white swimcap (he wonders, briefly, how she manages to keep all that hair under such a tight cap) and goggles around her neck, but he’s never seen her up close before. She’s good, he knows, one of the best on the team. A star. 

And a teammate of the Eunji Woohyun and Sungyeol have been torturing. And her very angry girlfriend.

“Thank you, Lee Sungjong,” Minha says again, holding his gaze for just long enough that Sungjong can’t figure out if it’s flirtatious or not. Then she turns and grins at Niel. “Gotta go. See you at lunch, okay?”

Then she’s gone with a swish of her long hair (Sungjong thinks he catches a whiff of chlorine, but maybe it’s just his imagination—she’s on her way to the pool, not coming from it) and Niel grins up at Sungjong. “Thank you, sunbae,” he says, and Sungjong doesn’t think he’s been thanked so many times for one small gesture before. It was just a muffin. “I really worry about noona, you know?”

“Got a crush, Niel?” Sungjong asks. He can’t really blame Niel for staring at her so worshipfully. 

Niel’s eyes go big. “On Minha-noona? No, no—she’s just my noona. We swim together a lot.”

That’s right; Niel’s on the men’s swim team. It’s not as good as the women’s, but their meets end up getting decent turnouts because they’re usually held right after the women’s, and Niel is probably the best on the team.

“You’re a good dongsaeng,” Sungjong tells him, thinking of how Sungyeol actually acts mature, like a real hyung should, when he’s around Niel. Niel must inspire that in people. Sungjong wishes Sungyeol would spend more time with him and less time with Woohyun, who is the worst influence Sungjong can imagine.

“Thanks, sunbae,” Niel says with a wide grin and waves a cheerful goodbye as he and Sungjong part ways. Sungjong toys with the idea of going back to the cafeteria to pick up another muffin, but he’s not all that hungry. He’ll just go work on his project and brainstorm punishments for the hyungs at the same time. For some reason, he feels energy flaring up inside him, and he’s confident he’ll come up with something that will definitely make his idiot hyungs rue their actions.

 

 

 

“What do you know about Lee Sungjong?” Minha asks Hyemi as they’re changing back into their clothes after practice. 

Hyemi’s head pops through the neck of her tanktop. “Lee Sungjong. Art major. Did a cover of ‘Adult Ceremony’ at the variety show last semester. It was disturbingly hot.”

Minha pauses in pulling up her jeans and quirks an eyebrow. “‘Adult Ceremony’?”

“Yeah. In a dress and all.” Hyemi opens her locker to look in the mirror as she fusses with her hair. “When most guys do stuff like that, it’s for a laugh. But he was like—fierce. It was crazy. And did I mention hot?”

Minha wasn’t at the variety show; she’d had a world history test the next day. But she does remember now, hearing a lot of talk about a guy in a dress who did ‘Adult Ceremony’ as well as Park Jiyoon. It’s surprisingly easy to imagine: his slender figure in something black and slinky, dark eyes fierce and expression haughty. Minha hadn’t ever considered a guy in a dress anything but a joke, but if it was Lee Sungjong...yeah, she can see how that could be hot.

“He’s supposed to be a pretty good guy, too,” Hyemi continues, abandoning her hair and pulling out a tube of lip gloss instead. “Dongwoo—my high school friend Dongwoo, not amazingly talented dancer Dongwoo—is friends with some of his friends. Why are you asking about him?”

Minha thinks of a surprisingly bright eyes in a coolly beautiful face and the taste of chocolate chip muffin lingering in her mouth and zips up her sweater. “I just think he’s...interesting.”

Hyemi pops her lips at herself in the mirror and screws the top back on the lipgloss before handing it over to Minha. “If by interesting, you mean ‘more gorgeous than any six girls combined,’ then I agree.”

“Who are we talking about?” It’s Hyunjoo, pulling her hair into a ponytail as she comes around the corner. 

“Why do you care?” Hyemi asks. “You and Hyemin-unnie are practically married.”

Hyunjoo snorts. “I can still be interested in finding out the identity of a guy who’s allegedly ‘more gorgeous than any six girls combined,’ because, frankly, I can’t believe such a person exists.”

“You’re so gay, unnie,” Hyemi says with a roll of her eyes. “Almost as gay as Hyuna-unnie.”

“Nobody’s as gay as me,” Hyuna says, appearing out of nowhere and shouldering her bag with the fluffy cat printed on it, dragging Eunji along with her. Her hair hasn’t been dried; she and Eunji were probably breaking all sorts of rules in the shower instead. “Why are we talking about how gay I am?”

“We’re not,” Hyemi answers. “We were _talking_ about how Lee Sungjong is gorgeous.”

“Who?” Hyuna asks, and Minha has to hide a smile behind her hands; it takes a lot to get Hyuna to even notice there are men in the world, much less remember their names. Why would she pay attention to men when women and cats exist?

“Lee Sungjong!” Hyemi repeats exasperated. “Lee Sungjong Lee Sungjong Lee Sungjong! Now is everyone aware of what we’re talking about now?”

Minha admits to herself that she doesn’t mind hearing the name over and over as she pulls her hair into a loopy bun. It has a nice sound to it.

“Lee Sungjong? Didn’t he do that drag number at the variety show?” Kyungri asks, coming around the corner of the lockers and jerking a comb through her hair. “Isn’t he gay?”

“Just because a guy likes to wear a dress sometimes doesn’t mean he’s gay, unnie,” Hyemi says with a roll of her eyes. “And he’s definitely not. He and Bora-sunbae just broke up, she told me in vocal performance yesterday.”

Minha tries to keep from having a reaction to that, but nobody’s paying attention to her anyway. Thankfully.

“Maybe they broke up because he’s gay,” Hyunjoo suggests.

“Not everybody’s gay, unnie,” Hyemi says with a roll of her eyes. “He could be bi, though,” she allows. 

“Who’s bi?” This is Sungah, appearing with Sera at the end of the row of lockers. “We can get him to join the club,” she grins as she elbows Sera. 

“Oh my god, for the last time, we are talking about Lee Sungjong!” 

Minha laughs at how frustrated her roommate is. And if there’s a note of giddiness in that laugh that has to do with hearing that Lee Sungjong isn’t gay and is single, well, again, nobody’s paying enough attention to her to notice it. Thankfully.

“Lee Sungjong?” Sera echoes. “Hoya’s best friend?”

“Who’s Hoya?” Sungah asks. “Is he hot?”

“Very,” Sera says. “You know, Lee Howon, from my department. I did that paper on differing cultural views on bribery with him, remember?”

“Lee Howon?” Every head in the room snaps around to look at Hyuna. The fury in her voice is palpable. “Lee Howon?”

“Uh. Yes?” Sera says carefully. Usually Hyuna is all kittycats and PDA with Eunji, but right now everyone in the room looks at least a little bit scared. Except for Eunji, who’s grinning broadly, dimples showing.

“He goes by _Hoya_? How dare he? That’s the name of one of my cats! That bastard stole it!”

“Do you not like Lee Howon, unnie?” Minha asks quietly. She isn’t sure Hyuna isn’t going to have a meltdown right here, though she also isn’t sure why.

“That’s the name of that bastard who’s been sexually harassing Eunji!”

Minha couldn’t tell you why her stomach knots up uncomfortably at those words. Well, she could, but she’d really rather not. 

“Now, babe, you know it turned out to really be his friends, not him,” Eunji says soothingly, though she’s still grinning. “And they apologized. The note was on _letterhead_.”

“His friends?” Minha has to ask.

“Yeah, the tall one who’s in the plays and is dating that creepy photography major kid? And the greasy business guy who’s got like twenty-seven boyfriends or whatever?”

The knot in Minha’s stomach loosens just a bit. Neither of those sound like Lee Sungjong. But if they’re friends with Lee Howon and Lee Howon is best friends with Lee Sungjong….

“Are you going to report them to the dean?” Sera asks. “That is not okay.”

Hyuna, still caught up in her anger, grits her teeth. “I want to—”

Eunji interrupts her with an airy wave of her hand. “Watching all three of them cower in front of Hyuna was good enough retribution for me. And Howon did seem really sorry when he apologized.”

Hyunjoo rolls her eyes. “Whatever, you just got hot watching Hyuna go all cavewoman.”

Eunji’s grin this time is smug. “What can I say? My girlfriend is hot.” She slides her arms around Hyuna’s waist, and the tension in Hyuna’s shoulders immediately disappears, though she still has a petulant purse to her lips, which Eunji immediately kisses. Minha chuckles quietly as she watches Hyuna’s hands sneak into the back pockets of Eunji’s jeans and turns to pick up her bag. They’re cute, her unnies, even if she’ll never understand Hyuna and her cats.

“And again the conversation turns to how gay Hyuna-unnie is,” Hyemi sighs. “Do we ever talk about anything else? Just once I’d like to talk about how straight I am, because that would probably mean I was getting some. C’mon, Minha. If we book it we can grab something to eat from the snack store in the student center and only be like five minutes later for class.”

“You go ahead,” Minha says, falling into step beside her roommate as they head out of the locker room. “I’ve already eaten.”

 

 

 

Howon blows out a deep breath as he heads over to the concession stand, hoping his cheeks aren’t too red. If they are, it’s from exertion, he tells himself; soccer is hard work. But he has to face the patheticness of that excuse when he reaches the stand and the girl sitting beside the counter looks up for her notebook and gives him the widest smile he’s ever seen.

“Hey,” she says, and even that one word has a twist of her Busan accent in it. He tells his hands to stop sweating; he _grew up_ in Busan, an accent from his own hometown should not be that hot to him. Isn’t the whole appeal of accents the exoticness? Or at least the novelty?

“Hi. Can I get a bottle of water, please?”

She reaches over and plucks a bottle out of the freezer behind her. “Sure. I guess you know how much it costs?” It could be annoyed, that comment, a dig about how he comes by every time they have a game or scrimmage. Instead, it just sounds teasingly friendly. Howon nods, looking down at his hands as they fumble to pluck the right amount out from his wallet.

“You know,” she says, and his eyes shoot up to her face, his eyebrows to his hairline at her conspiratorial tone. “I always wonder—don’t the coaches provide the team with water? Why do you always come over here and pay for a bottle when you don’t need to?”

_Fuck. She noticed._ Howon drops a couple of coins and bends down to find them, scrabbling in the dirt to retrieve them, scrabbling in his own brain for an explanation that isn’t, _I think you’re hot and you always grin at me when I buy something and it’s totally worth the cost of the water_. 

“Uh, this is colder,” he finally settles on as he straightens and puts the money on the counter. He doesn’t trust himself to place it in her hand. 

She laughs, a friendly, open sound that makes Howon feel like he’s twelve years old with his first crush all over again, and hands him the bottle. “Someone needs to introduce them to the concept of ice, then.”

Howon tries to smile, but he’s pretty sure he just looks like an idiot. Why is he like this with her? He’s been confident with every girl he’s liked since middle school. The last girl he had a hard time being cool around was said first crush, Juhyun, back when he was a kid. He’s dated girls who are far more conventionally gorgeous and intimidating than this girl who’s all beaming smiles and loud voice and casual jeans. So why does she reduce him to this?

“Uh, yeah. Thanks.”

“Good luck with the rest of the game! Hwaiting!”

He holds up his fists in halfhearted imitation of her. “Hwaiting!”

And the walks away kicking himself for being a giant idiot.

  

 

 

 

Sungjong is popping fries into his mouth with his left hand and working on some crosshatching in his sketchbook with his right hand when a cupcake appears six inches from his eyes. He sets down his charcoal pencil and looks up to find Park Minha smiling down at him. Her hair’s pulled back now, not loose around her shoulders like it was this morning, and it makes her eyes look bigger and brighter. Or maybe it’s the giant hoop earrings that are creating that impression.

“To pay you back for the muffin,” she says, one eyebrow lifting just a fraction as though she’s issuing a challenging and not just handing him a baked good.

Sungjong doesn’t really love cupcakes—too much frosting, which he’s never liked the taste of—but he takes it anyway. “You really didn’t have to, sunbae.” Niel had told him she was a couple of years older than him, so of course that’s what he has to call her, though the title feels strange in his mouth.

“I know,” she says. “But I saw it and thought of you.”

Sungjong is not thrilled at the squirm in his stomach at the thought of her thinking of him. _You don’t want to date anyone right now. And who knows if she’s single or into guys or would even be interested in you?_ “Thank you, sunbae,” is all he says. 

“No problem.” And then she’s picking up her tray off the table—she’d set it down to hand him the cupcake—and scanning the rest of the cafeteria. The way her nose wrinkles ~~is really adorable~~ makes him think she hasn’t found who she’s looking for.

Sungjong should really just tell her to have a good night and go back to his sketching. And Sungjong almost always does what he knows he should do. But there’s a part of him—the part that occasionally likes to put on a hot dress and dance to a sexy girl group dance even though the unspoken law of guys-in-dresses is that it has to be for laughs, the part of him that stays friends with Woohyun and Sungyeol even though they’re both idiots who are more trouble than they’re worth, the part of him that decided to major in art even though he’d have aced any other more potentially-lucrative major he could have chosen—that unhinges his jaw and forces out words he knows he shouldn’t say at all. “Sunbae, do you want to sit?”

She actually looks almost startled as her eyes jerk back to his, and it makes the back of Sungjong’s neck feel hot—she seems so poised, he hadn’t thought anything could startle her. “You’re working,” she says carefully, nodding towards his notebook.

“It’s nothing I can’t do later,” he answers, and it’s true. “I was just taking advantage of sitting alone.”

She nods, but he can see the hesitation in her body. He wishes he knew why it’s there. “I think my friends must have eaten already.”

“Some of mine may trickle in later.” Hoya, at least, will probably stop in since Sungjong’s not cooking tonight. And Myungsoo has a late class on Tuesdays, so he’ll probably be by at some point, too.

Again, he sees hesitation in her shoulders, but then she smiles again. “Okay,” she says, pulling out the chair in front of her with her foot and sliding into it. 

He can tell already that she probably doesn’t mind sitting alone—he doesn’t either. Myungsoo had told him that his freshman year, he hadn’t gone into the cafeteria at all unless Sungyeol was going, too, because he didn’t know anyone and couldn’t bring himself to sit alone. He ate a lot of microwavable cup ramyun that year. But Sungjong has never felt judged by the other students for eating on his own—or if they are judging him, he doesn’t care. For some reason, he thinks Minha might be the same way.

“You can keep working,” she says with a nod towards his notebook as she tears her roll in half. “I really don’t mind.”

“It’s not even for an assignment. More trying-to-settle-on-a-subject for an assignment.”

“What’s the assignment?”

He tries to ignore how cute she looks popping a piece of roll into her mouth. “Facial study. For my drawing class. We can pick anyone we want, and I can’t settle on which of my friends to choose.”

Minha takes a bite of vegetables, and when she’s done swallowing, she surprises him by asking, “Mind if I look?”

Sungjong doesn’t usually show off his in-progress pieces, not even sketches, not to anybody but Hoya and Amber. Sungyeol-hyung ruffles his hair and calls it “Sungjongie’s vanity,” but it’s more about protecting his vision: he doesn’t want anyone to see it until he knows he’s showing them what it is he intended to create. 

But for some reason, he finds himself sliding the sketchbook across the table to her. She sets down her chopsticks and pushes her tray to the side, wiping her hands—her really pretty hands—carefully on her napkin before touching the notebook. Again, he feels the back of his neck heating up. He hadn’t expected her to be that thoughtful. Most people aren’t.

She takes her time, focus shifting from one section of the page to another slow enough that he can know just what sketch she’s looking at at any given moment. That’s Sungyeol-hyung in the upper left—he’d looked over Sungjong’s shoulder at lunch yesterday and saw that Sungjong had drawn in those long dents on his cheeks and had tried to grab the sketchbook and rip the page out; he’s never understood that it’s unique attributes like that that make a face interesting enough to want to draw. Upper right is Seohyun, face calm and eyes intent—he’d sketched her as she read and thought it was a better representation than any he could imagine; Seohyun is most herself when she’s reading. Bottom right is Dongwoo-hyung, large mouth open in one of his belly-busting laughs, all teeth and slitted eyes and the way his mouth looks just a little lopsided when he’s laughing that way. Bottom left is Hoya, of course, eyebrows prominent and expression surprisingly soft. Other people don’t get to see that expression very often, but Sungjong does. He sees it so often he’d sketched it from memory.

“Wow. You’re really good.”

Sungjong is used to being complimented on his art. He _is_ very good, and he’s known it since he was a little kid drawing with chalk on the sidewalk. It was impossible not to compare his fully-formed figures, wobbly and not-quite-proportional though they might have been, to the other kids’ stick figures. His kindergarten teacher had suggested his mom enroll him in art classes, and since that time, he’s had people complimenting his art—well except for when he went through that brief Damien Hirst phase in high school and no one had understood a thing he was doing.

But while he enjoys compliments, they don’t ruffle him, and they definitely don’t make his neck flush. Except apparently when they come from Park Minha. _Shit. This is the last thing I need._

He should really make an excuse— _oh, look at the time, I’m almost late for a meeting_ —and get the hell out of here before he finds out whether she has any actual insight into art, but he doesn’t. Instead, he finds himself asking, “Which do you like?”

Her eyes flicker up to his, then back down to the paper so fast he isn’t sure she actually looked up. But again, she takes her time, and he can tell how seriously she’s thinking about it, and he forces himself not to knot his hands into fists in his lap.

“I think,” she says slowly, raising her eyes to meet his. “You should choose someone you think you can get to know in a new way by drawing them. When you look at something or someone all the time, you get to the point where you don’t really see them, right? So pick someone you know you’re going to be able to actually _see_.”

Sungjong’s mouth is suddenly dry. He knows he should respond to her, but somehow he can’t do anything but stare back at her and try not to let himself wonder if that really is a hint of pink flushing her cheeks or whether its his imagination. 

_Fuck. I am so screwed._

“Or, just pick the person whose face you’re least likely to get sick of.” Her voice is light, but her words are a little bit rushed, and he knows he’s made this awkward by not responding, made her second-guess her answer, which was perfect. Shit.

“No, that was really helpful,” he says, and he winces as his voice quavers. Maybe it wasn’t even noticeable to her, but it was to him. “Are you into art, sunbae?”

She’s turned her attention back to her meal, and Sungjong pulls his sketchbook back and then stuffs it in his bag. He can’t look at it right now.

“Not really. I mean, I like it, but I haven’t studied it at all. I don’t know anything that really counts. I just know what I like.”

“Well, studying it only really teaches you how to know why you like what you like. Or how to make what you like. So you’re a third there.”

Her laugh is quiet and hidden behind her hand because he’d caught her with his—pathetic—attempt at a joke when she had just put another bite into her mouth. She glances up at him through her lashes and it doesn’t look like a practiced move, but even if it is, he doesn’t care. Fuck.

“What’s your major?” he asks, because it’s always a good topic changer with students you don’t really know, but also because he wants to know. 

“Communications,” she says, then wrinkles her nose at herself and laughs. The sound _tinkles_. “The student-athlete cop-out, right? All I really cared about when I started was swimming. But now I’m thinking of changing to drama.”

He kind of wants to shout _No!_ —Sungyeol is a drama major and the last thing he wants is Minha to be around Sungyeol. Once she has to deal with him and then finds out he’s Sungjong’s friend, she won’t want anything to do with Sungjong at all, probably. But he manages to say, “You like to act?” instead, which isn’t much better: of _course_ she does. Why else would she want to major in drama?”

“I do. I’m not very good at it, though.”

Somehow it doesn’t seem like self-deprecation for the sake of modesty or fishing for an _I’m sure that’s not true_ reassurance. She sounds like she really means it, like she’s arrived at that conclusion through clear-eyed self-evaluation and has decided to be honest. It shouldn’t be as hot as it is. 

“Well, isn’t that why you study something? To become better at it?”

She tilts her head in acknowledgment, taps her chopsticks against her lips. “It should be. But sometimes it feels like university is the place where everyone picked either what they’re already good at—so it’ll be easy for them—or what their parents told them they had to study.”

Sungjong has noticed the same himself. “You don’t have to make your decisions the same way everyone else has.”

“I know. But sometimes there’s an expectation that you’ll already be at a certain skill level before you even start classes. It might be hard for me to catch up with everyone else.”

Sungjong is trying to figure out how to answer that without sounding like he’s offering platitudes when a tray drops with a clatter onto the table next to his elbow and Hoya drops into the chair, eyebrows making a displeased line across his forehead. 

“Uh, hi, hyung?” Sungjong offers. Hoya’s not usually rude enough not to acknowledge people he doesn’t know.

“I finally got the money for the other Eunji’s date from Woohyun,” Hoya says without preamble. “He said he _sold some stock_ he was ‘planning to dump anyway’ to get it. Sungyeol didn’t even have to contribute.”

Sungjong isn’t surprised at all that the money thing didn’t even faze Woohyun or that Hoya’s fuming as he shovels food into his mouth. He glances at Minha and finds her watching Hoya with an amused curl of her lips. 

“Hyung, this is—”

“This is what sucks so much about those two. They’re never going to learn to grow up unless they have to face real consequences, and they’re never going to have to do that because Woohyun is a greasy jerk with the Midas touch when it comes to the stock market and he can buy his way out of anything. Maybe if I can convince Myungsoo and Sunggyu-hyung to cut them off for a while—”

It’s nothing Sungjong hasn’t thought himself before—and in fact he’s still trying to come up with the worst conceivable punishment for the trouble makers—but right now there are more pressing things to address. “Uh, hyung—”

“—they have to learn they can’t keep doing things like this. They could have gotten me _expelled_. And they just had to make enemies of _swim team goddesses_. I—” Hoya finally glances up and stops abruptly with his chopsticks halfway to his mouth, staring across the table. Minha, still with that amused quirk to her mouth, waggles her fingers at him. “Hi there.”

Hoya moans and drops his head onto his arm. Sungjong notes gratefully that Minha still looks amused.

“Hyung, this is Park Minha. Sunbae, this is Lee Howon, but most people call him Hoya.”

Hoya lifts his head to look at Minha again. “Don’t tell me—you hate me too?”

She shrugs, popping the last of her roll into her mouth. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“Hyung didn’t know they were harassing Eunji-ssi.” Sungjong usually isn’t the kind to try to explain things so they don’t look as bad, figuring that if people leap to wrong conclusions it’s their own fault and it will come around to bite them in the ass eventually, but for some reason he can’t bear the thought of Minha thinking that ~~Sungjong’s best friend~~ Hoya is the kind of person who would do something like that. “Our—his friends were playing an unfunny prank, and Howon-hyung feels terrible about it.”

“Oh, I know,” Minha acknowledges with a dismissive shake of her ponytail. “But just because I might not hate you about that doesn’t mean that I might not hate you for another reason. I mean, I don’t even know you. You could be very hateable. I like to reserve forming opinions till I gather more information.”

Sungjong coughs from choking down a laugh, but Hoya just stares at her without blinking for a long moment. Then he shakes his head and turns back to his food. “I’m too tired today to decide whether you saying that makes me really like you or makes me think you’re a monster.”

“You really like her,” Sungjong says without thinking and then has to fight to keep a calm face when the other two look at him in unison. “I mean, hyung really likes women who don’t take shit from guys. So I think he’ll decide that you aren’t a monster and he likes you.”

Hoya looks at Sungjong a beat too long ( _fuck, he’s already figured it out_ ) before he turns back to Minha. “Actually, I might decide you _are_ a monster and I like you anyway. I don’t discriminate against other species. I’m pretty convinced that Sungjong is actually not fully human, and I like him anyway.”

“Not fully human?” Minha repeats with a quirk of her eyebrows.

“No human could be that perfect,” Hoya says, going back to his food. “Have you looked at him?”

“Hyung!” Sungjong hisses. He usually takes any of his hyungs’ fawning over him in stride, paying no more attention to it than he does to Myungsoo and Sungyeol’s spats. But for some reason he’s uncomfortable with Hoya saying those things in front of this girl. (Oh, he knows good and well why he’s uncomfortable. He just can’t admit it to himself yet.)

But. 

“I have,” Minha says, and when Sungjong’s eyes swing around to stare at her, she again holds his eyes for just a beat too long, and when she looks away, he could _swear_ that her cheeks are pink. _Probably not as pink as your neck is right now, Lee Sungjong_ , he tells himself.

“I have to run. Thanks for inviting me to sit with you, Sungjong-ssi.”

The smile she gives him is more in her eyes than on her lips, and her ponytail swings back and forth in a really hypnotizing way as she walks away. 

“You’re really fucked,” Hoya announces once her slight body disappears from view.

“I know,” Sungjong groans. _Trust me: I know._


	2. two

Hoya is so busy reminding himself to play it cool that he’s only about thirty yards from the concession stand when he notices that there’s a blond head of hair behind the counter, not just Eunji’s brown ponytail. His feet falter when he recognizes Woohyun’s friend Key, and his chest clenches when he sees that he and Eunji have their heads bent close together and are laughing at something. There’s a sick taste in his mouth.

 _Key isn’t even into girls_ , he tells himself. _And if he were, he’d be into bitchy style icons like him, not a tomboy like Eunji_. But it still takes him a second to get his feet to work again.

They’re still laughing when he finally makes it to the counter, Eunji with her head thrown back and eyes almost disappearing, Key shoving her away from him in his mirth. They don’t even notice him. He cracks an awkward smile and shifts as he waits for them to see him.

“Oh!” Eunji swallows her laughter to a stop and blinks at him in surprise. “I’m sorry, I didn’t even see you there!”

Hoya forces his smile wider, hoping it seems sincere and not strained. “It’s fine, I just walked up.”

“Oh, hey, Hoya,” Key says, his own laughter dying away. 

“Kibum,” Hoya acknowledges with a nod. And then, before he can even think about it, the words just tumble out: “I didn’t know you two knew each other.”

Hoya immediately wants to run to the top of the science building and fling himself off, putting an end to his life and his own misery. _What the_ fuck _, Lee Howon??_ He doesn’t even _know_ Eunji (or at least he’s not supposed to—she’s never told him her name or that she’s a journalism major or that she plays intramural softball, and Hoya will never, ever admit to how he acquired that information), so why the fuck should he know that she and Key are friends? He might as well have just flat-out said, _I’ve got a huge crush on you and have been semi-stalking you for the past few months trying to figure out everything about you, but I still can’t bring myself to have an actual conversation with you because I’m a giant loser._

But Eunji doesn’t seem to notice the strangeness of the question, or maybe she didn’t even hear it as she leans down and reaches back behind her for a bottle of water from the freezer. The back of her t-shirt rides up just a little, showing a patch of skin above the hem of her jeans. Hoya jerks his eyes away immediately, but the image is seared into his eyeballs. 

Unfortunately for him, he jerks his eyes over to Key in time to see Key’s eyebrow raise fractionally. _Fuck, he’s going to figure it out_ , Hoya inwardly panics, and the roar of panic in his ears is so loud he almost doesn’t hear Key say, “Her friend Naeun is dating Taemin.” And then, because he’s a total bastard jerkass—of _course_ he is, he’s friends with _Woohyun_ —Key’s lips twist and then say, “I didn’t know you two knew each other, either.”

“Of course we do!” Eunji pops back up and presents Hoya with his water bottle, ever-present grin in place. “We’re old friends—see each other every game. Right, Seven?”

Key’s eyes flicker to the number on Hoya’s jersey, and his cheekbones show that he’s fighting to hold back a smug grin. “Every game? The team doesn’t provide you with water? Isn’t that against regulations? Couldn't they get sued for that?”

Hoya’s hand flexes around the coins he’d fished out of his pocket, and he wants desperately to punch Kim Kibum in his stupidly feline face. But Eunji just laughs and holds out her hand for the money. “This is colder,” she explains, wiggling her fingers, and Hoya jerks himself into motion, dropping the coins into her palm, careful not to touch her skin. 

“Is it now?”

God, Key is such an insufferable _ass_. Does he _have_ to sound all wryly amused like that? Why the fuck does Jinki-sunbae, who’s such a nice guy, hang out with him? “It is,” Hoya says stiffly. 

“How about that? Your water brings all the boys to the yard, Eunji-yah.”

Hoya very nearly does launch himself across the counter and right at Key—Hoya knows he could take him; he’s far more solid and muscled than scrawny Kim Kibum, though knowing Key, he’s probably a biter and a hair-puller—but Eunji just laughs like it’s actually a funny joke and not Key-code for _I know you like her, Lee Howon, and I’m going to make that as awkward for you as possible_. Maybe she hasn’t known Key long enough to know Key-code when she hears it. He hopes.

The coach's whistle slices through Hoya’s anger, though, and so he just grits his teeth and says, “Thanks. Have a good day.” He cuts his eyes to the side, glaring at Kibum, but he makes his lips tip up into a smile. “Goodbye, Kibum.”

“See you, Hoya,” Key says with a grin, and Hoya feels a muscle throbbing in his jaw as he turns away and starts jogging back to the field: somehow, Key had made his farewell sound like a threat.

 

 

“Hey, Hoya, Key asked me to give you this.”

Hoya looks up from lacing his cleats to find Minho standing above him and holding out a folded-up piece of blue paper. What the hell? Key is sending him _notes_ like they’re in third grade? What a drama queen. Why can’t he just text like anyone else?

“What is it?” he asks warily. He’s not entirely sure he trusts that it won’t explode if he opens it. Key is best friends with _Woohyun_.

Minho shrugs. “I didn’t ask.”

Of course he didn’t. Minho’s a nice enough guy, but he’s not the curious type. Hoya takes it carefully. He’s pretty sure he knows what the note is about, even if he doesn’t know what exactly it’s going to say. He’s also pretty sure he doesn’t want to know what exactly it’s going to say. “Thanks.”

Minho smiles and turns away to his own locker, and Hoya carefully unfolds the paper.

 _She’s not dating anyone_ , it reads in an artfully messy scrawl. _Is that what you were waiting to find out? If you like her, ask her out. I can’t believe I have to tell you this. Fuck, straight guys are stupid. I don’t know how the human race has made it this far._

Hoya crumples up the note so fast he gives himself a papercut, trying to shove it into his pocket until he realizes he doesn’t _have_ pockets in these shorts. He almost trips over the bench hurrying over to the trashcan, ripping it up into tiny pieces and letting them flutter into the can. Maybe he’s the one who’s in third grade.

“Hey, if he propositioned you and you aren’t interested, just tell him.” 

Hoya nearly jumps out of his skin as Minho appears at his shoulder. He gapes up at his taller teammate.

“Seriously, he won’t care,” Minho says, smiling in what he has to think is a reassuring way. “He’ll figure out a way to make it sound like _he_ turned _you_ down when he retells what happened, but he won’t give you a hard time.”

Hoya tries to decide whether it’s a mistake worth correcting: he doesn’t want anyone to think that Key—gross—is propositioning him. He wouldn’t mind if it were one of his other friends who’re into guys, but he hates Key so much right now that he really doesn’t want anyone thinking anything like that has passed between them. On the other hand, if he corrects Minho, Minho might ask what it was about then, and there’s no way in hell Hoya’s going to explain the truth. 

“It wasn’t that—he didn’t,” Hoya settles on saying. Thankfully, Minho doesn’t push it.

“Ah, okay. I just figured. He does that sometimes, with straight guys. Sometimes they even give it a shot—he doesn’t mind being someone’s experiment, as long as he’s the one doing the offering.”

And then Minho shrugs again and wanders off, and Hoya has definitely added Key to his to-murder list, right below Woohyun and Sungyeol. 

Except _She’s not dating anyone_ , the note had said. Hoya can’t decide whether he wants to smile with new-found hope or to punch his locker while pretending it’s Kim Kibum’s face. He settles for pulling out his phone and texting Sungjong. 

 

 

“So ask her out.”

It was exactly what Hoya knew Sungjong was going to say, and he’s already ready with his argument. “But is it too early? Too weird? I mean, she’s never even told me her name and we only ever see each other at the concession stand. Won’t it seem out of nowhere?”

Sungjong snorts and leans back against the pillar behind him. They’re sitting on the front porch of the science building, even though neither of them have classes in it. But Hoya’s always liked this spot: it provides a good view of the quad and some nice shade from the sunshine. “If anything, hyung, it’ll give her a good explanation for why you spend money on bottled water when there are always three huge coolers of it provided for free by the team.”

Hoya drops his head into his hands, sighing again. “You think she already knows?”

“If she’s bothered to think about it at all, then, yes, hyung, she already knows.”

Hoya makes an unintelligible mumble whose meaning even he isn’t sure of and then feels Sungjong patting the back of his head.

“Think of it like this, hyung. She probably knows, and she’s been nothing but friendly to you. That means she won’t shut you down if you ask her—she might say no, but she won’t be mean about it.”

“I don’t care whether she’d be mean about it or not, I want to know if she’ll say _yes_.”

“I really don’t think you can know that ahead of time. Unless we do what middle schoolers do and I find one of her friends and ask her if she can find out if Eunji possibly likes you.”

 _Don’t tempt me_ , Hoya thinks. “But maybe she’s been giving me some girl signal that says, _I like you fine but please don’t ask me out_ , and I don’t even know it!”

“I really don’t think girls work like that, hyung. I think they’re pretty much like us and are just as freaked out at the thought of getting rejected. But you may have a point—Eunji seems like a straightforward kind of girl; maybe she already would have made a move if she was interested. Or maybe not. You won’t know till you ask her, hyung.”

“Well, what about you? Is that Minha girl as into you as you are into her?”

And that’s where Sungjong’s clear-sighted wisdom fails. “I don’t know,” he says, mouth creasing in frustration. “At dinner the other night, did you think she was?” 

“I don’t know. I think I’m bad at reading girl signals.”

“You’re no help,” Sungjong says with a sigh. “This is what comes of being the only straight guys in our group of friends. We have no one to talk to to get some perspective when we’re both having girl problems.”

“Sungyeol and Sunggyu-hyung are bi,” Hoya points out. “And Dongwoo is like...pansexual or something, I don’t even know. But I don't exactly want to go to any of them for advice. We could use some more straight friends,” he agrees. “It’s weird when you think about how all of our friends are dating each other.”

Sungjong sighs. “At least I have female friends to get advice from. I’m going to talk to Amber-noona. Qian-noona’s her RA—I’m sure she’d have time for you if you want to talk to her.”

“Nah, I’m gonna…” Hoya trails off, waving his hand.

“Sit here and mope? You do that, hyung. But don’t forget it’s your night to make dinner.”

 

 

“So you don’t want the kind of relationship that you think will distract you from the shit you want to get done,” Amber says, sniffing a t-shirt from the pile on her desk she’s sorting through. 

“Right,” Sungjong answers from his position on her bed, back against the wall. “I have too many things I need to accomplish. I can’t afford to get sidetracked.”

Amber has evidently decided the shirt is too smelly to wear again without washing, because she balls it up and free-throws it into the laundry basket on the other side of the room by Jinri’s bed. “Do you have any reason to think she’s super high-maintenance or something?”

“No,” Sungjong answers slowly, eyebrows furrowing. If there’s any impression he’s gotten from Minha, it’s that she can take care of herself. That’s probably why he’s so drawn to her. He doesn’t know many people who are as self-contained as he is.

“Well, have you talked to her about what she wants in a relationship?”

“No.” 

Amber scores another basket, this time with a pair of rolled-up socks. “Then how can you know what it would be like to be with her? Maybe it would be like with Bora. That worked out all right for you.”

“It wouldn’t be like with Bora,” Sungjong answers automatically, and when Amber cocks an eyebrow and plops down in her desk chair with an expectant look, he sighs and looks down at his hands. “With Bora, I knew from the beginning that I liked her but I probably wasn’t ever going to fall in love with her. Which is exactly why it worked.”

“But you think you’d fall in love with swim team goddess?”

Sungjong has always rolled his eyes at that nickname for the swim team girls, but he has to admit that when he thinks of Minha’s pale shoulders rising above the water, hair wet and flowing like seaweed around her and water droplets sparkling in her eyelashes, it seems really fitting. He is so fucked. “I don’t know,” he says, hollow, but it’s a lie, and Sungjong is not one to lie to anyone, especially not Amber. Especially not himself. “Yes. I probably would.”

Amber nods, giving him a sympathetic look. “Okay. I get that. But you still don’t know what she’d be like in a relationship. Even if you two were in love. I don’t really know her, but I don’t feel like she’s the type who’d get all clingy even if she were in love.”

“I know, noona.” It’s true. It’s definitely true. But Sungjong is still looking at his hands.

“Wait. So if you know that, is this really about you being, like, afraid of falling in love? ‘Cause, shit, Jjong, I didn’t think you were afraid of anything.”

“I’m not afraid,” Sungjong answers sharply, then melts when Amber gives him an unimpressed look. “I’m not. I’m just...I haven’t ever been before. I don’t know how it will change me. I know who I am now and how to go about getting what I want. I don’t know who I’d be if I were...in love.”

Amber teases him a lot, but she also knows how to be serious and when he needs her to be. “Not everybody changes a lot when they’re in love.”

Sungjong thinks about Myungsoo and Sungyeol, about Sunggyu and Woohyun and Dongwoo, and snorts. “Could have fooled me.”

“Look at Sunyoung and Jinki-oppa,” Amber points out. “They’re exactly the way they’ve always been, just together now.”

“They’re disgustingly cute,” he counters.

“Yeah, but they were disgustingly cute before. Now they’re just disgustingly cute together. Or Jia-unnie and whichever of the twins she’s dating. They haven’t changed at all.”

“I think she might be dating both of them. But that’s not the point, noona.”

“Then what is?”

“The point is that this wasn’t part of my plan.”

“Sungjongie—”

“I know what I need to do to get to where I want to be after I graduate, and right now I know I can accomplish all of it. It’ll be hard, but it’s doable. But introduce some completely unknown factor into the equation and—”

“Please don’t start talking math. I’ll have to kick you out.”

“It’s just a metaphor, noona.”

“I don't care. I finished my math gen ed requirement my first semester just so that I wouldn’t ever have to think about math again. So keep your math metaphors to yourself.”

“Fine. No more math metaphors. The _point_ is that I don’t know what a relationship with someone I’m in love with would really be like. I don’t know if I’d be able to balance that and my schoolwork, too. Something would suffer, wouldn’t it? And if it was the relationship, I’d hate myself for hurting her, and if it was my grades or my art or my chances at internships, I’d resent her for that and hate myself even more.”

“Hate yourself? Lee Sungjong?” Amber’s got a huge grin on her face now. “Fuck, this is more serious than I thought.”

Sungjong rolls his eyes. “I _told_ you I was fucked.”

That teasing light is still in Amber’s eyes, but she sobers as she swipes her bangs out of her face. “Look. You’ll never know till you give it a try, right? Or at least talk to her about what she wants and where it might be going? It isn’t like you to torture yourself over this when you could actually do something. So do something. Talk to her. Kiss her. Something. Just stop sitting around on your impressive ass and actually do something. You know I’m right.”

“Yes, I know.” It’s nothing he hasn’t told himself already, in fact. 

“Good, because if you sit for too long on said ass, it might become less impressive, and that could lower your chances with her.” At Sungjong’s skeptical look, she grins widely, holding up her hands in a gesture of innocence. “I swear I saw her checking it out when you were walking across the quad yesterday.”

Sungjong picks up a faded hoodie and hurls it at Amber’s laughing face, but he has to admit that he feels better.

 

 

Sungjong really, really intends to talk to Minha about the possibility of a relationship—or at least ask her to get a coffee with him—but when he runs into her in the hallway of the arts building, his fingernails still crusted with yellow paint that he didn’t have time to wash off entirely before he has to hurry to sculpture, he somehow ends up asking her something completely different instead.

“Hi, Sungjong-ssi,” she says, and he likes the way his name sounds when her voice is speaking it. A little too much.

“Hello, sunbae. I haven’t seen you in here before.” Like he keeps track of everyone who walks through the building. It’s a stupid thing to say, but the way her face breaks out into a grin makes him forget all about that.

“Yeah, I just dropped into the drama department and asked them for some information.”

“You’re doing it then? Changing majors?”

“Yeah, I think so.” Her eyes are shining with excitement, and Sungjong could stare at her forever. “Like you said, the point of studying it is to get better, right? I can only improve!”

Sungjong has a lot of things he wants to say, but sculpture class starts in three minutes and it’s on the other end of the building. Still, he can’t help but smiling back—his real smile, the one that makes his hyungs squeeze his cheeks and coo about how cute their little Jjongie is no matter how much he glares at them and threatens their lives afterwards. “That’s great. I’m happy for you.”

She’s still beaming at him, long arms wrapped tight around the binders she’s clutching to her chest. “I guess I’ll be spending more time in this building, then. And we’ll see each other more.”

 _That’s flirting, right? Isn’t that flirting?_ Sungjong has never in his life had trouble discerning whether there was flirtatious intent behind someone’s words, but somehow Minha’s elegance dismantles his flirtation-radar and he honestly can’t tell if she’s just being friendly or not. The thought burrows into his mind with an edge of panic, and maybe that’s why he finds himself saying, “Would you mind letting me draw you?” instead of goodbye.

Minha’s eyes go wide as they blink at him, her smile gone now, and Sungjong gropes for some explanation. “I’ve been thinking about what you said—about seeing people so often that you don’t even really see them anymore. So I thought it would be better to pick someone I don’t know that well.” _And then I’d have an excuse to stare at your face and spend time with you and I am so fucked._

Again, Sungjong can’t really read her face or her tone when she answers—she doesn’t seem reluctant, but she doesn’t sound enthusiastic, either. “I’m not sure I’d be good at being that kind of a model. Hyemi says I’m not very expressive.”

Maybe Sungjong should take that as a no and walk away, but just as he’d known she’d meant it when she told him she wasn’t a good actor, he thinks now that she really isn’t sure about whether she’d be good at this. Maybe it’s just an excuse to get out of it, but maybe she really just doesn’t think she’d be a good subject. “That doesn’t matter—that can be better, really. It’s easy to draw, like, Dongwoo-hyung—everything he feels is already right there on his face. It’s fun to draw him, but not really a challenge. With someone more—” He tries to think of a word that won’t make him sound like an asshole. Cold? Aloof? But neither of those are right at all, though he’s sure she’s been accused of both before. He isn’t thrilled with the word he settles on, but it won’t be till he’s walking away from her that he figures out what the right word really is, and even if he’d thought of it in the moment, he could hardly have told her she was regal without sounding like Woohyun-hyung. “—dignified, it’s harder to capture emotions, but it’s more impressive when you can do it.”

She looks at him for a moment, then dips her head in a nod. “Okay. That would be fun. When do you want to meet up?”

“I work in the bookstore on Thursday nights and Saturday mornings, but other than that, my schedule is flexible.” He does have several things planned with various friends, but since he’s not a flake, no one will mind if he has to shuffle something around this once.

“Okay. How about tonight? I’ll be practicing till 8, but after that I should be free. You can come meet me by the pool.”

“That works for me. Thank you, sunbae.”

“Oh, you don’t have to call me that. You can call me noona. See you tonight, Sungjong.” And before Sungjong can even react, he’s watching her long hair swish as she walks away from him and hoping that asking her to model for him wasn’t one of the stupidest decisions he’s ever made.

 

 

“Hello.”

Eunji looks up from her textbook and blinks. The two guys standing in front of her bench are very handsome, in totally different ways, but the way they’re smiling at her, all teeth—or, in one of their cases, gums—and over the top, would be enough to terrify anyone. But Eunji’s always been brave, so she just smiles back and sets her highlighter down in the crease of her book. “Hello,” she answers cheerfully.

“You’re Eunji, right?” the shorter one with the pointy nose asks. “The one who works at the concessions stand?”

“That’s me.”

The two guys exchange a look and then, without invitation, sit down on either side of her. There’s enough room for them on the bench, but they’re sitting a little close and she doesn’t even know them. “What’s this?” she asks, trying not to laugh.

“You’re a hard woman to find,” Pointy-Nose says. “We had a couple of mishaps before we located you.”

“Yeah, the registrar was _very clear_ that there was only one Eunji registered as an undergrad,” Gummy-Smile clarifies. “And you are definitely not her.”

“Oh, yeah, Eunji’s not my real name—it’s Hyerim. Did you think Park Eunji was me? That happens a lot—she gets my mail and stuff. Thankfully she’s nice.”

“Nice. Right,” Gums mutters. “A harridan for a girlfriend and my bank account almost got wiped out for her. Very nice.”

Eunji has no idea what that means, but Hyuna’s always been a sweetheart, so she’s about to chide Gums for saying she was a harridan, but Nose distracts her. “Hyerim doesn’t sound anything like Eunji. How’d you get that nickname?”

“There were four Heyrims in my elementary school,” she explains. She’s explained it a million times before, but she doesn’t really mind. “I got tired of always being called by my full name—that’s what my mom uses when I’m in trouble, you know?—so I just picked a name I liked and started going by that. I got more used to it than my real name after a while,” she adds with a laugh. 

“Fascinating,” Nose says, and Eunji can’t tell if he really means it or not. “Tell me this, Eunji-whose-name-is-really-Hyerim. Do you know a person named Lee Howon?”

The name sounds vaguely familiar, but Eunji can’t place it. “I don’t think so?”

“About yay tall, menacing eyebrows, on the soccer team, likes to buy unnecessary bottles of water from you?”

“Who, Number Seven? I thought his name was Hoya,” Eunji says, confused, and then immediately remembers that she isn’t supposed to know that—he’s never told her his name, and the only reason she knows it is from hearing the other guys shout it out when he’s running down the field. In those soccer shorts. That show off his thighs. That are really, really nicely formed.

“Like you, our Howon chooses to confuse the whole world by going by a name that isn’t his own,” Nose says. “But you do know who we’re talking about. Good. That makes this easier. Now—”

“I am going to _murder_ you two!” The voice that cuts in belongs to a tallish guy who’s now looming above them. He’s extremely beautiful, but his face is twisted in fury as he reaches out and grabs Gums and Nose by their arms and hauls them away from Eunji’s bench—he doesn’t look like he’d be strong enough for that, but apparently he is. Maybe his rage is fueling him. “I am going to flay you alive—slowly and with a rusty butter knife—and then drop you into a vat of lemon juice and leave you there until you pickle and then chop you up into little tiny pieces and set those pieces on fire and then turn the ashes into a diamond and use it to deface your tombstones and any other record of you so that no one will know you ever existed. I will eradicate your memory from the face of this earth.”

“Wow,” Eunji says, because that’s quite a threat. Even Naeun would be impressed.

“Now Sungjongie, is that any way to talk to your hyungs?” Nose shakes his head sadly and glances down at Eunji. “Kids these days.”

“Hyungs my _ass_. I’ve known three-year-olds with more maturity and impulse control than you two! I _told_ you not to do this again! I told you to mind your own business! And now you’re torturing _another_ girl?”

“We’re not—” Gums starts to protest, looking very indignant, but Beautiful Angry Boy ignores him, using visible effort to calm his voice as he addresses Eunji. “I am so sorry these two were bothering you.”

“We weren’t bother—” Gums tries again, but once again Beautiful Angry Boy ignores him.

“It will not happen again, I can promise you that.”

“We didn’t—”

“If it’s the last thing I do, I will make sure they learn that they can’t harass people.”

“We weren’t harassing her, we were asking her out for Hoya!”

Eunji is pretty sure that she and Beautiful Angry Boy have the exact same looks on their face as they gape at Gums.

Gums rolls his eyes and jerks his arm out of Beautiful No-Longer-Angry Boy’s grip. “We were asking her out to make up for the thing with the other Eunji. We were trying to make amends!”

Beautiful Boy looks like his anger is going to burst out again, but Nose uses his distraction to extricate his own arm and sits back down beside Eunji on the bench.

“I apologize for our dongsaeng making such a fuss, Eunji-ssi. He has misunderstood our motives and wronged us by leaping to conclusions.” Beautiful Boy makes a furious noise that’s actually more than a little terrifying but Nose keeps talking. “We’re trying to do our poor friend a favor. Lee Howon is, unfortunately, a loser who neither knows how to dress nor how to ask a beautiful lady such as yourself on a date. He does, however, have various other characteristics that might possibly make up for that deficiency. He is from Busan, which your dialect tells me is your place of origin as well, so you have that in common. We have thankfully managed to break him of the habit of using obnoxious and unnecessary English words like he thinks he’s a gangster, so you will not have to suffer through that. His grades are good enough to impress the most discerning parents, and with his sterling work ethic, I have no doubts he will be successful in whatever post-collegiate venture he chooses to pursue. He is both an excellent athlete and a superior dancer, so I can only presume that that degree of kinesthetic control will translate into talents in bed—”

“Hyung!” Beautiful Boy really does look like he’s about to start flaying Nose alive right here in the middle of the quad, possibly with his fingernails if he can't find a butter knife quickly enough, but Gums is beaming and flaps a hand to shush him.

“—and we work out together,” Nose continues, “so I know what said body looks like, and trust me, you will not be disappointed in its aesthetic qualities.”

Eunji’s mind is kind of whirling, but it manages to settle long enough for the picture of Hoya’s legs in those soccer shorts to make her mentally agree that, no, she probably would not be disappointed by the rest of Hoya’s body. 

“So—” Nose spreads his hands wide. “What do you say to a coffee rendezvous with him? Perhaps tomorrow evening?”

“At the coffee shop on Sixth, not the one here on campus.” When Eunji looks blankly at him, Gums grins. “The coffee there is far superior. Trust me. I’m an expert.”

“I really am going to _kill_ both of you,” Beautiful hisses, apparently not impressed by the coffee aficionado.

But Gums and Nose aren’t paying him any attention, are instead staring at Eunji with such pleading eyes that they might as well have their hands clasped under their chins. Eunji looks from one to the other as she mentally scrolls through everything that’s been said since that first hello. And then she stands up, stuffs her textbook into her bag, and swings it onto her shoulder. 

“You’re quite the salesman,” she says, patting Nose on the shoulder. “But I think you two should mind your own business, don’t you? I have no idea what happened to make your friend so angry with you, but it seems to be about sticking your nose in Hoya’s business, so why don’t you learn from whatever mistake you made and not intrude anymore, okay?”

By the time she finishes, Gum’s eyes are so wide they’re swallowing up his face and Nose looks completely gobsmacked, like something he’d previously thought impossible is happening in front of him. Eunji bids all three of them a cheerful goodbye and laughs to herself as she heads for the languages building. She barely makes it halfway there, however, when Beautiful’s voice stops her.

“Eunji-sunbae!”

When Eunji turns to look at him, he looks less angry and a lot more panicked. He bobs a bow to her, then hurries into his words. “Hoya-hyung didn’t have anything to do with those two just now, I promise you. He would have been horrified if he’d known. Please don’t hold it against him.”

Eunji gives him a grin. “Oh, I don’t. But I put together enough of what was going on to know that if they got what they wanted, they’d only keep getting involved in things they shouldn’t. It was good for them to be rejected, right?”

Beautiful’s panic has morphed to something calculating, maybe even impressed. “Yes…?”

“Besides, I prefer if the people involved in the actual date are the ones who do the asking, don’t you?”

“It might be a while before Hoya-hyung gets up the courage to do it, though,” Beautiful warns. 

“That’s okay. I’m not one to wait around myself.” And then she smiles goodbye and goes to her journalism ethics class, the thought of Seven’s legs in his soccer shorts keeping her company. 

 

 

 

(Later at dinner with Taemin and Naeun, when Eunji tells Key about the encounter in the quad, he laughs so hard he falls off his seat. And then gleefully informs Eunji that Nose is his best friend. Eunji is somehow not surprised.) 

 

 

The light of the sunset is streaming through the windows and dying the water of the pool orange when Sungjong reaches it. He’d half expected the pool to be full of the swim team goddesses, but instead all he sees is one long white arm and then another lift gracefully out of the water as Minha does the backstroke down the length of the pool, her face paler than ever under her white cap and her black goggles. She does a turn when she reaches the end of the pool where Sungjong is standing, and he sees her eyes flick over to him; she knows he’s there. But she does three more lengths of the pool, eyes focused on the serpentine reflections of the water on the ceiling high above, before she stops not far from him, treading water and pulling off her goggles. “Hi,” she says, barely sounding out of breath.

“Hi.” Sungjong is used to feeling confident no matter where he is, but he feels a little awkward standing next to the pool and looking down at her. She looks so comfortable in the water. 

“Let me run and change clothes and then we can get started, okay?”

“Actually—” Sungjong starts, stops, mentally gives a prayer of thanks that she won’t be able to see his flush in this light. “Would it be okay if you stayed in the water?” Her eyebrows go up, and he hurries to clarify. “You look very at peace when you’re swimming. It would be a challenge to capture that.”

“If I keep swimming, you won’t be able to get a good look at my face. Isn’t this a facial drawing project?”

“Yes, but—”

“How about this?” She tosses her goggles up to the side of the pool, gestures him closer. He crouches down at the edge of the pool as she moves closer to him, pulling off her cap and tossing it after her goggles. Then she removes her hair elastic, her long hair falling out of its bun and down into the water. “Wait a sec.” She ducks under, and when she emerges, water streaming down her face, her hair does look like seaweed hanging around her shoulders, just like he’d imagined it would. Sungjong stares, mesmerized, as she rolls onto her back and floats there very close to the wall, her hair spreading out around her. If he tipped forward, leaned down, he could kiss her. She looks like a mermaid.

“Is this okay?”

“It’s perfect,” Sungjong says, sitting down on the concrete and unzipping his bag and pulling out his sketchbook. “Can you stay like that for a while, noona?” He hopes his voice doesn't sound as self-conscious as he feels calling her that. But she'd told him he could.

“For hours,” she answers. “Take all the time you need. What kind of expression do you want me to make?”

Sungjong brushes a clean page of paper flat, picks up his pencil. “What you looked like when you were swimming—can you do that again?”

“Sure.”

And she does. For thirty minutes, Minha floats in the water, staring up at the ceiling with an expression Sungjong can only describe as peaceful. She seems as comfortable lying in the water as Sungjong does lying on his bed, and her quiet breathing and the slap of the little waves against the walls of the pool and the scratch of Sungjong’s pencil make for a lulling backdrop. It feels awkward at first, staring down at her while she doesn’t look at him, but it doesn’t take long for him to sink into the moment, and it becomes as natural as it does when he’s drawing Howon or Amber. Except that he feels like he’s seeing Minha in ways he doesn’t normally look at people: seeing all the little details of her face, all the nuances of expression that are unique to her. He tries to capture the way the dying light falls on her face like a caress, the brightness of her eyes, the dark cloud of her hair. By the time the sun sets and only the ceiling lights are lighting the room, he’s got the beginnings of a good drawing. A very good drawing.

He stops, flexing his hand, and Minha’s eyes flicker over to him, taking his shifting as a sign that he’s done. She moves out of her float, going back to treading water. “Can I see?” she asks, closing the last little distance between her and the wall and resting her crossed arms on the concrete beside him. 

“One more time like this and I should get it finished,” Sungjong says hesitating only for a moment before holding up the sketchpad. Minha’s eyes are thoughtful like they were a few nights before at dinner as she looks it. And then she smiles as she raises her eyes to his. 

“You flatter me.”

“I really don’t,” Sungjong answers automatically, and it would be a greasy thing to say, a line stolen from Woohyun-hyung, except that his voice is quiet and low and completely sincere. 

He can feel her eyes still on him as he closes the sketchpad, tucks it into his bag, and zips it closed. When he sets the bag to the side and turns back to Minha, she’s still watching him with the same look she turns on his art. He finds he’s holding his breath as he looks down at her.

“Lee Sungjong, you’re single, right?” she asks, the corner of her mouth lifting in a way that makes his heart pound.

“Yes,” he says.

And then she reaches out and takes him firmly by the front of his shirt and pulls his head down to meet hers, and kisses him like a mermaid kisses a sailor. _Mermaids always drown their lovers_ , he thinks distantly with the part of his mind that isn’t completely captured by the feel of her lips against his. _Even if they don’t mean to, they end up drowning them anyway._

But as Minha’s tongue presses against the seam of his lips and she breathes into his mouth, he thinks he really doesn’t care.

 

 

Hoya almost doesn’t head over to the concession stand when the whistle blows. He wants to see Eunji, of course, but what if Key’s there again? Besides, he’s feeling a little sorry for himself: Sungjong had floated into their apartment last night with a look on his face that left no doubt in Hoya’s mind that things were going well with Minha. But Hoya knows things aren’t as likely to go well with Eunji—he hasn’t yet worked up the courage to ask her out, and it will be some time before he battles back the voice that keeps saying, _It’ll be out of nowhere and she’ll think you’re weird. Some strange guy she doesn’t even know asking her out. She’ll say no_. 

But his alarm hadn’t gone off this morning, so of course he slept right through his first class, and Woohyun and Sungyeol were acting suspiciously innocent and kind to him at lunch (he’s pretty sure Sungjong knows why they’re acting that way, but he refuses to tell Hoya, just reassures him that _I’m taking care of it, hyung_ ), and he’d gotten a lower grade on his comparative politics paper than he was hoping for. It’s been a hell of a day, and he might as well treat himself to the sight of Eunji’s smile to make sure it’s not a total waste.

Key is not there when Hoya approaches the stand, and Eunji’s head is bent over her notebook in her lap. But she looks up when he reaches the counter and smiles at him—yeah, just that smile makes this day a thousand times better: he is so pathetically gone—and reaches automatically for his water. Hoya’s too tired to say anything, so he just digs around in his wallet for change and murmurs a thank you as he takes the bottle.

“Your name’s Lee Howon, but they call you Hoya?”

He’s so caught up in the sound of her dialect that it takes him a moment to realize she just said his name—both of his names. That she _knows_ his names. “Uh, yeah,” he answers, staring at her. Her grin broadens.

“And you already know my name is Hyerim but I go by Eunji, right?”

He nods dumbly, the label of the water bottle damp against his palm. Maybe he should deny it, but he's too gobsmacked to muster up the acting skills to pull it off.

“Do you want to get coffee sometime, Lee-Howon-who-goes-by-Hoya?”

He can feel his eyes going wide in what Sungjong calls his Hoaegi face and he barely manages to choke out a yes before she’s laughing and leaning towards him. “You could have asked me the very first day. I didn’t know you liked me, but if you’d asked me, I would have said yes.”

And yet Hoya can’t even bring himself to care about the time he’s wasted, not when Eunji grabs his hand in hers and writes her phone number on his skin in purple ink and tells him she’s free tomorrow night. 

 

 

Hoya's barely stumbled into the apartment when Sungjong pops up off the couch and demands, "So? How was your date?"

Hoya still hasn't recovered sufficiently to actually answer, so he just shakes his head and tries to communicate through his eyes.

Sungjong grins wide, eyes sparkling. "That good, huh? She let you kiss her?"

" _She_ grabbed _me_!" The words burst their way out, and Sungjong starts laughing so hard his face crumples up.

"Really, hyung? And it was that good?"

Hoya is quite sure he's never going to be able to put into words how it felt when he was hesitating outside the door to Eunji's dorm and all of a sudden she'd said, _I guess I have to make all the first moves, don't I?_ and grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him in for a kiss. A really, really fantastic kiss, even if it was way too short for Hoya's taste. But it was a first date. And she's said she definitely wants to get together again. There will be other kisses in the future—longer ones. He can't wait.

He also can't bring himself to tell Sungjong that after she'd pulled back and before she'd winked at him and headed inside, she'd grinned and smacked his ass. _Tell your salesman friend with the pointy nose that I'm sure I won't be disappointed at all_ , she'd said, and Hoya had been so shocked at the ass-slapping that he almost hadn't heard what she said. He's pretty sure he's only got one friend who answers to that description, and if he weren't still in a state of euphoria over how well their date had gone and how amazing the kiss was, he'd probably be terrified that Eunji seems to already be acquainted with Woohyun. 

But right now he's too happy to worry about that. And he has questions of his own. "And yours? How was it?"

"She decided we needed to go swimming," Sungjong says, and oh, yeah, now Hoya notices his hair is wet. "I swear she's half mermaid, it's like she wants to be in the water all the time." But he's grinning his crinkly-cheeked grin.

"Please tell me you had water fights and chased her around the pool and she actually let you catch her even though there's no way in hell you swim even half as fast as she does."

The line of Sungjong's catfish smile tells Hoya just how pleased he is with himself. "Maybe that's what happened."

"You two probably made out in the water, too, didn't you?" It's actually a really hot picture, the two of them wet and gorgeous and all tangled up together holding onto the rails of the ladder. 

Sungjong just shrugs, but he's still got that smug look on his face. "Water is her natural habitat."

"So neither of you are human, then. Well, I guess it's good you found each other." He sobers, though, because he has something serious to ask. "Does that mean you're feeling better about giving it a chance? I know you were worrying about how dating seriously would affect your plans."

Sungjong shrugs. "I've done the impossible more than once before. I'll make it work."

Hoya has no doubts about that at all. "And the Sungjong who's in love, you're okay with becoming him?"

Sungjong tilts his head thoughtfully, but his eyes are very bright. "I think I'll like him okay."

"Well, I know I haven't had a chance to get to know him all that well yet, but for what it's worth, he seems even better than not-in-love Sungjong to me." Hoya's feeling so great he can't keep himself from saying it. 

Though of course it makes Sungjong roll his eyes. "Hyung, you are such a greaseball sometimes. You've been spending too much time with—Oh! I almost forgot! Put your shoes back on!"

"Why? Where are we going?" Hoya asks as Sungjong sprints by him and starts to put on his own shoes, but he's already obeying Sungjong's order.

"Over to Sunggyu-hyung's. Sungyeol should be about to head over there right now. And we don't want to miss this."

Hoya feels his canine-baring grin spreading across his face. "Don't tell me—you finally figured out a suitable punishment for the trouble maker couple?"

"They will never invade your business again," Sungjong swears, opening the front door and gesturing Hoya out. 

"I can't imagine a punishment _that_ good."

"But my imagination has no such limitations, hyung. This will definitely teach them their lesson."

"Will they be angry?"

"Furious. Angrier than Woohyun-hyung was when he found out I still have his toaster. But they'll never mess with us again. I'm positive."

"Oh, I believe you. I always knew you weren't fully human. I'm not surprised to find out you're a demi-god or whatever. Those two should have known better than to mess with you."

 

 

 

When Dongwoo opens the door to hyung-line's apartment, Woohyun and Sungyeol are already screaming.


End file.
